Nomads continued our tour of the more picturesque grounds of Middlesex with a trip to the Sudbury Hill home of Harrow cc. The facilities were great, including a bar and a sloping pitch and we had a chance to play with a remote-controlled electronic scoreboard.
The home side were Harrow 4th eleven, basically the fathers of players in their youth team. As expected they were pretty sound and played mainly good orthodox cricket shots after they won the toss and chose to bat in the searing heat.
There was an early wicket for Nomads with an acrobatic diving catch from slip specialist Mahesh Vyas.
Harrow then pushed on and, for most of the innings, the scoring rate fluctuated between 5 and 5.5 per over. Nomads' fielding was a little ragged before drinks and a few chances went down but we gradually improved and some of the ground-fielding towards the end was excellent; Abbas, Safi and Darwin spring to mind for some great stops and commitment and there was a direct hit from Hasan with just one stump to aim at. Abdul also hit the stumps from three quarters of the way back to the boundary but the batsman had just made his ground.
After around 27 overs (with 8 to go) Harrow were on about 155 for 4 but they had wickets in hand and some of Nomads premier bowling options had been used up. I will hand over to John for his report....
........" On a good batting wicket, Harrow's innings had contributions of 70, 66 and a quickfire 24 not out near the end to bring their total up to 228 for 5 off 35 overs. It looked a pretty formidable score.
In reply, Nomads lost 2 wickets in the first over without a run on the board and then another wicket on 25. Abdul and Hasan added 50 before Abdul was bowled off his arm for 26. This brought in Zia and, together with Hasan, he changed the course of the game as they added 157 - a Nomads record for the 5th wicket. Hasan and Zia were both unbeaten, with 74 and 104 respectively, at the finish as Nomads wrapped it up with nearly 3 overs to spare. Zia's form with the bat in recent weeks has been amazing. He hit 3 sixes and 15 fours in his century but Hasan was a bit more restrained in his innings and was happy to let Zia have more of the strike. This, by the way, was Nomads' first win for several weeks although we could and should have won a couple of the recent games if catches had been taken and other things had gone our way." JC.
So, an excellent victory and some of the best batting ever seen from Nomads on a pitch that did have a little help for the bowlers at times. When either the second or third wicket fell, I heard one of the Harrow fielders remark; "Oh well, at least they turned up." We certainly did, and several club records were broken. The 5-wicket stand record which broke my treasured record, shared with Hasan, for the 5th wicket of about 138 (when the fifty partnership came up on that day in 2007, I was still on 0); also probably the fastest century scored for Nomads. Additionally, it was Zia's 5th successive half-century (2 of them were converted into tons) which is quite a rare feat in any form of cricket.
Clapham Nomads won by 6 wickets.
Scores to follow.
Man of the Match - Zia
Fielder of the Day - Mahesh.
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